Inside the Bloomsbury group

Priya Parmar’s second novel opens an intimate, witty and highly entertaining window into the early 20th-century circle of writers, philosophers and artists known as London’s Bloomsbury Group. They met several times a week at the homes of Vanessa and Clive Bell and Vanessa’s brother and sister, Adrian and Virginia Stephen (later Woolf). This erudite group also included the novelist E.M. Forster; biographer Lytton Strachey; artist Duncan Grant; art critic Roger Fry, curator of New York’s Metropolitan Museum; and economist John Maynard Keynes. The Stephen siblings—Vanessa, Virginia, Adrian and Thoby, the eldest brother— moved to the “bohemian hinterland” of Bloomsbury after their parents died, and Thoby’s Cambridge friends quickly adopted it as their favorite gathering place.

How the West was lost

Lin Enger’s moving and enlightening second novel resonates emotionally and intellectually on several levels: as an homage to the vanished American bison, a reflection on the forceful removal of Northern Plains Indians from their homelands and an engaging family saga peopled with characters who could have been this Midwestern author’s own ancestors.

Unlikely bonds in 1938 San Francisco

Chinese-American author Lisa See has made her mark in the realm of historical fiction by melding her well-researched historical sagas with strong female characters linked either by birth, as in Shanghai Girls (2009) and Dreams of Joy (2011), or by lifelong friendship, as in her breakout book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005).

Traveling the world to find his roots

Justin Go’s ambitious, sprawling and compelling debut novel, The Steady Running of the Hour, lurches from America to England, France, Sweden Germany and Iceland—even stretching to the Himalayas—switching back and forth in time from pre-WWI England to the present.

Shell-shocked and searching

Anita Shreve’s latest character-driven novel is both a historical glimpse into the side effects of war and a mystery centered on a young woman’s search for her lost identity.Stella Bain opens as a young nurse’s aide regains consciousness in a hospital camp on a French battlefield in the winter of 1916. She’s been hit by shrapnel in her legs and can’t remember any...

Confronting sterilization in small-town North Carolina

From 1929 until 1975, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,000 of its citizens, targeting inmates in mental institutions, epileptics and others whose sterilization was considered “for the public good.” Diane Chamberlain has based her latest novel on this controversial procedure, the Eugenics Sterilization Program.It is 1960, and Jane Forrester has just been hired as a social worker...

Murders in Italy trace back to WWII secrets

In his 15 novels, Chris Bohjalian has delved into a potpourri of weighty topics, including environmental activism, medical malpractice suits and interracial adoption. Some of his more recent novels are injected with an element of mystery, and he continues on that track with his latest—a brilliant blend of historical fiction and a chilling serial killer story.This gripping novel opens in...

A winter tale

Minnesota author Peter Geye’s engaging second novel, following 2011’s Safe from the Sea, is also set in northern Minnesota, near the rugged shores of Lake Superior. The plot shifts back and forth in time from the late 1800s to the 1920s, focusing on Thea Eide—who is just 17 in 1895 when she leaves Norway for America to find a better life—and Odd, her son, born a year...

Shattering stereotypes in Reconstruction-era Alabama

The aftermath of the Civil War—specifically, the Reconstruction era in Alabama—comes to vivid life in Taylor M. Polites’ debut novel, which dispels some of the myths associated with that period of our history.The Rebel Wife opens in 1876 with the gruesome death of Eli Branson, the local mill owner, from what his doctor calls blood fever. Eli had been shunned in the small town...

Welcome to Hollywood

Joseph Kanon has made his mark in the literary thriller genre, starting with 1997’s Edgar-winning Los Alamos. His fascination with the post-WWII era continues in Stardust, which blends one man’s search for the reasons for his brother’s death with an eye-opening look at the machinations of the Hollywood studios during the Communist witch hunts.Ben Collier (formerly Kohler)...